Any disadvantage using a texture pack?

Tom2012 · March 2013

Hi,

I'm using Texture packs for everything at the moment. Sometimes I have a one off sprite and I add it to a texture pack just the same. I could just add it directly to the project. But is there any advantage to this?

I've read up a fair bit on the forums about this but am still unsure what the cons of texture packs are?

Thanks

Tom

zvardin · March 2013

The only downside I know of is if one texture pack gets so big you're running out of memory. In that case, it may be worthwhile using multiple texture packs. Outside of that though it's a good idea to use texture packs because it should be a lot faster.

ar2rsawseen · March 2013

1) yes what @zvardin said
2) one texture pack will be slower to load at the start but faster usage in overall scene, while with separate sprite scene will more likely load faster, but might work slower in overall due to texture switching in CPU/GPU.
For example, imagine if CPU/GPU can handle only 1 texture at a time, it will have to be switching between multiple texture. But if everything is in one texture, it is already loaded and can be manipulated.

I would suggest combining texture packs by scenes. That way they will not grow so big, but will have complete advantage of processing, because each scene is displayed separately

Tom2012 · March 2013

Thanks guys - much appreciated.

Makes a lot of sense

aditya · November 2014

Need to use multiple spritesheets since no image can be greater than 1024x1024. As @zvardin points out here, the device runs out of memory and crashes.

Basically the doc shows the usage as:

TexturePack.new({"1.png", "2.png", "3.png", "4.png")}

Possible to do something like this?

TexturePack.new({"1.txt", "1.png", "2.txt", "2.png", "3.txt", "3.png", "4.txt", "4.png")}

ar2rsawseen · November 2014

@aditya

good try, but nope I don't think so
those should be different texture packs

Kaligula · June 2016

Hi,

I created simple class if that can help with loading multiple atlases and holds reference of specific image to specific texture pack so you can fetch as with name of image.

-- use as:
-- textureCache = TextureAtlasCache.new()
-- textureCache:loadAtlases( { "atlas0", "atlas1", "some_other_atlas" } )
-- local img = textureCache:getTextureRegion( "duck.png" )
--[[ 
 
This is a class which represents texture cache in images
 
]]
 
 
local AtlasesPath = "images/atlases/"  -- should be change to your path to atlases
 
 
TextureAtlasCache = Core.class( Object )
 
 
 
function TextureAtlasCache:init( )
 
	self._atlasHolder, self._atlasKey = {}, {}
 
end
 
 
-- resets state of cache
function TextureAtlasCache:reset()
 
	self:unloadAtlas( "all" )
	self._atlasHolder, self._atlasKey = {}, {}
 
end
 
 
function TextureAtlasCache:info()
	return "TextureAtlasCache"
end
 
 
 
-- loads all passed atlases to memory and creates links between image name and texturepack
-- ( assumption is that name of atlas and txt file have same name and is passed without extension { "first", "second" } for first.png / first.txt and second.png / second.txt
function TextureAtlasCache:loadAtlases( atlases)
 
	for i=1, #atlases, 1 do
 
		self:loadAtlas( atlases[ i ] )
 
	end
 
end
 
 
 
-- load atlas to memory
function TextureAtlasCache:loadAtlas( name )
 
	if ( not( self._atlasHolder[ name ] ) ) then
		self._atlasHolder[ name ] = TexturePack.new( AtlasesPath..name..".txt", AtlasesPath..name..".png", true )
 
		self:loadNames( name )
 
		print( "loaded "..name.." into atlasHolder["..name.."]" )
	else
		print("atlasHolder["..name.."] already in memory")
	end
 
 
end
 
 
-- unloads atlas from memory
function TextureAtlasCache:unloadAtlas(index)
 
	if index == "all" then
 
		for i,v in pairs( self._atlasHolder ) do
 
			if i ~= 2 then
				self._atlasHolder[ i ] = nil
				v = nil
			end
 
		end
 
		self._atlasKey = {}
 
	else
		if self._atlasHolder  then
			self._atlasHolder[ index ] = nil
 
 
			for k, v in pairs ( self._atlasKey ) do
				if self._atlasKey[ k ] == index then
					self._atlasKey[ k ] = nil
				end
			end
 
		end
	end
	collectgarbage()
	--collectgarbage()
	print("unloaded atlasHolder["..index.."]")
 
end
 
 
 
-- create links between images and appropriate texture pack
function TextureAtlasCache:loadNames( packName )
 
	local contents, file = "", io.open( AtlasesPath..packName..".txt", "r" )
 
	if (file) then
 
		contents = file:read( "*all" )
		file:close()
 
		local entities = self:split( contents, "\n" )
 
		for i=1, #entities, 1 do
			local temp = self:split( entities[i], "," )
			local imageName = temp[ 1 ]
			if imageName ~= nil then
				print( "Put in dict: "..imageName )
				self._atlasKey[ imageName ] = packName
			end
		end	
	end
end
 
 
-- returns region for image in case that image is appropriate texturepack
function TextureAtlasCache:getTextureRegion( texturename )
 
	local key = self._atlasKey[ texturename ]
	if key ~= nil then
 
		local atlas = self._atlasHolder[ key ]
		if atlas ~= nil then
			return atlas:getTextureRegion( texturename )
		end
	end
 
	return nil
 
end
 
 
function TextureAtlasCache:split( str, delim )
    -- Eliminate bad cases...
    if string.find(str, delim) == nil then return { str } end
 
    local result, pat, lastpos = {}, "(.-)" .. delim .. "()", nil
    for part, pos in string.gfind(str, pat) do
		table.insert(result, part); lastPos = pos;
	end
 
	table.insert(result, string.sub( str, lastPos ) )
 
	return result
end

PrestonBerger · June 2016

By ensuring the texture dimensions are a power of two, the graphics pipeline can take advantage of optimizations related to efficiencies in working with powers of two. For example, it can be (and absolutely was several years back before we had dedicated GPUs and extremely clever optimizing compilers) faster to divide and multiply by powers of two. Working in powers of two also simplified operations within the pipeline, such as computation and usage of mipmaps (a number that is a power of two will always divide evenly in half, which means you don't have to deal with scenarios where you must round your mipmap dimensions up or down).

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